


The Amazing Ears of Nicholas Burkhardt

by JollyCat



Series: Change of Fortune [2]
Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 00:29:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13892403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JollyCat/pseuds/JollyCat
Summary: Some occasions when Nick’s Grimm-enhanced hearing moved his relationship with Sean to a new level - and one time it didn’t help at all!





	The Amazing Ears of Nicholas Burkhardt

**Author's Note:**

> I recently wrote a story called ‘Change of Fortune’ which kept expanding out in places that didn’t quite work with the pacing of the whole thing. This is some of those sections, plus a sequel of sorts. I don’t know that you necessarily have to have read ‘Change of Fortune’ but this starts about half way through chapter 4 and continues events after the end.

Nick has very, very good hearing. Maybe not quite as good as in the first weeks and months after his encounter with the Jinnamuru Xunte (a meeting which still makes him shudder at the memory and cringe if a particularly big black fly comes anywhere near him), but good enough. Sometimes it’s a very useful thing to have, like tonight when three klaustreichs tried to sneak up on him and Sean and soon discovered that alley-cat stealth is no match for a Grimm and a Zauberbiest fighting in tandem. Sometimes it’s a bad thing to have, like tonight when he can’t sleep and the sound of a faucet dripping all the way downstairs is keeping him awake. Nick does recognise the drip is only part of the problem - the evening’s adrenaline and a small, nagging middle-of-the-night worry have something to do with it too - but the faucet is something he can act on. With a sigh he gets out of bed. Nick doesn’t officially live in this house, not since all that business with the fuchsbau got cleared up, but he does spend a lot of nights in Sean’s spare room and in his house. It means he doesn’t need to turn any lights on as he slips silently down the stairs and to the kitchen.

Nick tightens the faucet and stands a moment staring through the window at the yard. Tonight had been good, they’d dealt with the klaustreichs effectively but with the minimum of bloodshed. It was the kind of hand to hand fighting he and Sean excel at, are getting better and better at together with every passing week. They’ve been training together too, so that now they’re a formidable fighting team. The thing is, Nick’s niggling worry, is that usually it is exactly this situation where Sean is aware of Nick’s physical closeness, where Nick sees a heat in Sean’s eyes or where a touch between them is held a moment too long. But tonight...nothing. Not a glance, not an accidental touch, not a raised heartbeat. Nick thinks all this being friends is great but he hasn’t taken his eyes (or his ears) off his long-term goal: he wants more. He wants to touch Sean so much, wants Sean to touch him in return and he thought he was on track to getting this. But what if Sean really is going to be happy with friendship? What if he doesn’t actually want Nick like that anymore?

Nick makes his way back upstairs, the house now blessedly silent. Except... just as he passes the door to Sean’s room he hears a noise, a groan almost, and his own name.  
Nick has his hand an eighth of an inch from the door handle when his brain catches up with his reactions and he realises what he heard wasn’t a cry for help, that the sound was so quiet only Nick’s ears could have possibly caught it. In fact it was the sound a man makes when he’s deliberately keeping quiet but can’t quite help a word escaping. And now Nick’s really _listening (_ and for sure he knows he shouldn’t, that he should move from this door and get back into bed and possibly put the pillow over his head), but he can’t move. He can actually hear Sean’s breathing, the tiny rhythmical noise as the bed shifts with Sean’s movement. Nick has absolutely no doubt what Sean is doing and when he hears his own name again he is so hard, so quickly that for a second he feels light-headed. When he hears another low groan from the other side of the door he has to fight not to touch himself, not to come right here in the hallway. He stands, blood pounding, breath catching, until there is one final shuddered breath and then silence from Sean’s room.

Nick hardly dares move. Only, what if Sean suddenly wants a drink of water, a snack or has a strange urge to take a midnight stroll? What if he opens this door and finds Nick standing here, sleep pants tent-poled and breathing ragged? The thought is enough to send Nick to his own room as quickly and silently as he can. And as soon as the door shuts behind him he gives in, and with a few quick strokes he’s gasping Sean’s name in return.

Sean doesn’t want to be just friends either, Nick knows that now. Tonight in the woods wasn’t indifference to Nick’s presence, it was cast-iron control. Oh, they agreed that they would be friends first but Nick has confidence that one day they will be more, much more. He just needs to wait for the right moment.

********

Nick does try not to use his hearing to snoop on friends - except for that one incident, the one that makes him blush slightly when he thinks of it - but sometimes he can’t help but overhear. For example, today he’d heard Sean and Adalind talking when she’d come to pick up Diana; Kelly was fast asleep and the house was quiet. They’d talked round their worries about Diana (and he can’t help feeling they have some justification) and how today is a big day. Diana is going to a school friend’s party and everything about that is new: the fact that Diana is going to school at all, that she’s made a friend there and that she’s going to a regular children’s party. All new, all worrying, because Diana may look twelve but she’s really got just six years of life experience and occasionally limited impulse control. Not to mention more power than the rest of them put together. When Adalind and Diana drive off Sean heads back into the house and turns into the living room, even though he knows Nick is in the kitchen. Maybe he needs a moment alone. Nick carries on with what he’s doing (which is a description of a weird frog Wesen they’ve been hearing reports about and which they plan to track down once both kids are back with Adalind) but keeps his ears open.

There’s a whimper from the other room as Kelly wakes up, one that quickly starts to rise in volume. Nick puts down his pen but before he has chance to move he hears Sean, his voice low and soothing,  
“Hey little man, you all grumpy now you’ve woken up? Come here and let’s see if we can make things better.” The whimper briefly becomes a wail but then subsides back to unhappy mutters, “My word, no wonder you’ve woken yourself up and are not happy with the service round here. Let’s get you sorted.”  
Sean appears in the kitchen. Even from here Nick can tell that his son and heir does not smell of roses but despite this Sean is holding him comfortably and the little boy is cuddling into him, damp-eyed. Nick goes to stand but Sean glances at him and what he’s doing and says,  
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this. I think I already need to change my shirt anyway.”  
“You sure?” Sean has dealt with the odd diaper emergency in the past but this strikes Nick as one that will be above and beyond the call of duty.  
“Yeah. I missed all this with Diana so I guess it’s only fair I pay my dues now.”  
Nick knows how much Sean mourns the time he lost with Diana, her short babyhood spent away from him. He listens as Sean heads off to the bathroom, the soothing murmurs, the eventual sound of Kelly’s laughter and Sean laughing (actually laughing) too. When the two of them re-appear Kelly has a complete new outfit and Sean has a different shirt. Sean grins wryly,  
“If we ever need something to knock siegbarste out with, I think we should ask your son.”  
He sits down on the other side of the table, Kelly on his knee and out of reach of the Grimm books. Nick finds himself smiling at the sight. It’s not just about being friends anymore, not just about wanting sex with Sean (though he wants that very much). It’s about family, he realises, their unexpected, unusual family.

*******

“I love you.”  
Sean says the words so quietly that even Nick can barely make them out. Sean’s lips are pressed against the soft skin just up above his hip and Sean seems to have decided this evening’s mission is to kiss every square inch of Nick’s body (not that Nick is complaining).  
“What did you say?”  
Sean looks up,  
“I didn’t say anything. It’s what I’m going to do that you should be interested in.”  
Liar, thinks Nick, but he says nothing, distracted by the progress of Sean’s lips and the touch of his hands. Since the moment, that moment, the moment that they finally kissed each other, Sean has not been able to keep his big, beautiful hands off Nick. This is a very good thing in Nick’s opinion, not least because Nick hasn’t been able to keep his hands off of Sean either.

“I love you.”  
Sean says the words seated at his desk and when Nick has just shut the door on the way out of his office. Nick turns back and re-opens the door,  
“Did you say something?”  
“No. But if you were looking for an excuse to come back and kiss me one more time while these blinds are still drawn I won’t say no.”

“I love you.”  
Sean says the words in the middle of a fight with five coyotls, just a whisper of sound as he watches Nick dispatch the largest of the pack into a patch of poison ivy.

 

Nick is absolutely sure he’s never had such a good time in a bedroom as he has recently - or the kitchen, or the living room or (particularly memorably) in the passenger seat of Sean’s SUV after that coyotl chase through the forest had got them both a little over-heated. The first night was beyond Nick’s wildest expectations and it was when he’d been lying, sprawled across Sean, sated and surprised, that Nick had said, ‘I love you’ for the first time. Sean had said his name like a prayer and held him like he never wanted to let him go and that was all that Nick had needed. But he does wonder slightly why Sean only says the same words so quietly that he thinks Nick can’t hear them.

“I love you.”  
Nick says it when Sean holds him, says it when Sean makes him come for a very unexpected third time in one night, says it when Sean cleans the kitchen after Nick’s unsuccessful attempt at making pancakes following too many beers with Monroe the night before. He says it when Sean volunteers to be the one to tell Adalind about the change in their relationship (although he doesn’t take him up on the offer and tells Adalind himself), says it when Sean is sitting in the kitchen, slightly pale, after ten minutes with Diana discussing the conversation about boys she’s had with her new school friends. Nick says it sitting on the couch and when they’re cooking dinner and when they’re driving to the precinct together in the morning.

Sean says ‘I love you’ into Nick’s hair, whispers it into his shoulder blade and the crook of his knee. He says it when the car door has shut, when Nick has his back turned, when Nick is in the shower or Sean thinks he’s asleep. But is it Nick’s imagination or is Sean starting to say it slightly louder?

 

The explosion is completely unrelated to Wesen in any way - afterwards Nick is quite put out about that. One of Portland’s more eccentric residents decides to launch his own rocket, complete with home-made rocket fuel, and Sean and Nick are just driving past when the ‘all units’ call goes out following a 911 from a concerned neighbour. Sean is with Wu coordinating the forces who have arrived and Nick is trying to talk to the ‘inventor’ when the rocket gets ahead of itself and self-destructs with the most almighty bang. Nick is thrown backwards and lies stunned for a moment before climbing to his feet. Then Sean has him by the shoulders and he’s held at arm’s length for inspection. Sean is saying something, he guesses asking if he’s okay, but his ears are ringing too much to hear.  
“I’m fine, not hurt. Is everyone else okay?”  
He can’t really make out the answer but the body language is reassuring.

 

They are standing by Sean’s SUV, just the two of them with Wu about ten feet away. Nick’s ears have stopped ringing but the world still seems very muffled. Sean says something but he can’t quite catch it.  
“Sorry, I’m really deaf. What did you say?”  
Sean repeats it but it’s still not clear,  
“What? Sorry...”  
Sean takes a deep breath and at only just less than a shout says,  
“I love you!”  
“That’s nice, sir,” Wu comments, “And I think most of Portland just heard you and I’m sure they’ll agree too.”

 

“Why did you never say it out loud before?”  
“Because I’d never said it before. I felt like I needed to, well, to practise I guess.”  
“You’d never said it to anyone? Not ever?”  
“Only Diana, and that’s a whole different type of love.”  
“So, are you going to keep saying it now?”

“I love you Nick. With all my heart.”  
“I love you Sean”


End file.
